Opinion: Can Donald Trump save America??

In a recent article in the Cape Charles Mirror entitled “Ferris Bueller’s Lesson: Trump’s Tariffs will be damaging to the US Economy,” this following comment was made, which comment deserves attention and consideration from every voting age person in America to wit:

“. . . nor will I disparage the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us.”

Now, how that statement is to be interpreted is unclear without knowing exactly who is the “us” that are to be destroyed by this alleged Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan, but for the sake of argument, we can make some assumptions as to who the “us” might be, based not only on our political history, because Teddy Roosevelt was a true “progressive,” and we know who he was out to destroy, but also the political history of England circa 1900 to WWI, and perhaps more importantly Dutch history in the period of the Batavian Revolution, which was a period of political, social and cultural turmoil at the end of the 18th century that marked the end of the Dutch Republic and saw the proclamation of the Batavian Republic.

By the end of the 18th century, the Netherlands found themselves in a deep economic crisis, perhaps very similar to that we find ourselves in today in this country, and during that time in the Netherlands, the banks of the Dutch Republic held much of the world’s capital, with the government-sponsored banks owning up to 40% of Great Britain’s national debt.

This concentration of wealth in the Netherlands of that period led to the formation of the Dutch Patriots by a minor Dutch noble named Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol.

The Patriots who were the “progressives” of their time, were inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, and what they desired were a more democratic government and a more equal society.

Jump forward in time to America at the close of the “Gilded Age,” and the “progressivism” of Teddy Roosevelt, and one finds that same theme, just as one finds that same theme today in America, where like before, we are looking at the essence of class warfare – the haves versus the have-nots.

In that period of time, the people of the Netherlands grew increasingly discontent with the authoritarian regime of the stadtholder, William V, while in our times today, the people of America are growing increasingly discontent with the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump.

Back then, the Dutch Patriots built support from most of the middle-class and founded militias of armed civilians, which between 1783 and 1787 managed to take over several cities and regions in an effort to force new elections which would oust the old government officials.

Today, in America, instead of militias, voting blocs are being created in an effort to oust the “old government” of corrupt Democrats and equally corrupt Republicans, and it is that which apparently Donald Trump is supposed to save “us” from, assuming we are a part of what Donald Trump represents, which is the same greed that was good in the time of the “Gilded Age,” and again during the reign of American Republican political icon Ronald Reagan.

That Trump is the champion of the “haves,” and the “greed is good” mentality that the “progressives” like Teddy Roosevelt were very much against is very much apparent in a Slate article entitled “Trump Celebrates Tax Bill With Mar-a-Lago Friends: ‘You All Just Got a Lot Richer’” by Daniel Politi on Dec. 24, 2017, as follows:

President Trump was in a celebratory mood on Friday night and told a group of his wealthy friends, “You all just got a lot richer” after he signed the tax cuts into law.

Trump reportedly uttered the words to a group of friends who were having dinner nearby at Mar-a-Lago, including two friends who spoke to CBS News about the remark.

Anyone spending time at what has come to be known as the “Winter White House” is not exactly suffering economically, considering the initiation fee is $200,000 and annual dues are $14,000.

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Those are the people who fear the “progressives” in America today, and the “progressives” in America today are a reaction to those same people, just as was the case earlier in England, and before that in the Netherlands.

Without the one, there would not be the other.

The powerful few against the impoverished many, which takes us back to the Dutch Patriot Revolt, as follows:

After the halcyon days of the Dutch Golden Age of the first two-thirds of the 17th century, the Dutch economy entered a period of stagnation and relative decline.

The absolute size of Dutch GNP remained constant, but the economy was overtaken by that of other European countries in the course of the 18th century, and in a number of economic sectors, such as the fisheries and most industries that had sprung up in the early 17th century, an absolute decline occurred.

In a direct comparison with where we are today in this country, the deindustrialization of the Netherlands (“offshoring”) resulted in de-urbanization as artisans that had worked in the disappearing industries had to move to areas where work was still to be found, and the shrinking industrial base was also concentrating in particular areas, to the detriment of other areas where certain industries (shipbuilding, textiles) had formerly been prominent.

Thus, just as in America today, in the Netherlands of that time, economic inequality markedly increased during the 18th century with the Dutch economy becoming dominated by a small group of very rich rentiers, and the economy shifted to what we would now call a service economy, in which the commercial sector and the banking sector dominated.

As is the case in this country today, those shifts had a devastating effect on the people who experienced downward social mobility and ended up in the lower strata of Dutch society.

Just as is the case in America today, in the Netherlands back then, the disaffection with the perceived state of the economy and the diplomatic decline was paired with a growing disaffection with the political system of the Dutch Republic among middle-class Dutchmen.

The Dutch “constitution” defined the Dutch Republic as a confederation of sovereign provinces with a republican character, just like America started out so many years ago, where power was supposed to flow upward, from the local governments toward the provincial States, and eventually the States-General. ‘

Those local governments, however, though ostensibly representing “The People” according to the prevailing ideology, had in fact involved into oligarchies dominated by a few families that in the cities at least were not formally part of the nobility, but were considered “patrician” in the classical sense.

Just as is the case in America today, the concentration of power in a more and more closed oligarchy frustrated the middle class, that saw its opportunities for political and social advancement blocked, also because the political patronage in regard to all kinds of petty offices was concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs, who favored their own political allies.

So there is some necessary background, which brings us back to the central question in the minds of Americans all across America today – who exactly is it that Donald Trump, himself a member of the oligarchy, or plutocracy, going to save us from, and how?

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As to this so-called “progressive movement” in America today, those who have working memories that cover periods of time far longer than the few nano-seconds of the American consumer today, that is nothing new, as a review of high school American history clearly shows, and in fact, the division between the haves and have-nots, which include me in their number, goes back to before the American Revolution.

Circa 1800, New York City, home of today’s Wall Street that owns American hack politicians like Hillary Clinton and “Wall Street Cholly” Schumer, was so associated with Alexander Hamilton and his commercial vision that his enemies, chiefly Virginia’s Tommy Jefferson, himself a debtor, called it “Hamiltonopolis.”

And before that, in Federalist No. 10, “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection” from the New York Packet, an earlier version of the Cape Charles Mirror, on Friday, November 23, 1787, Virginia’s own Jemmy Madison had this to say on the subject, to wit:

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination.

A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.

The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

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Were Virginia’s Tommy Jefferson and James Madison early progressives in America?

An argument certainly could be made that they were.

As to creditors and debtors in early-America, the excellent work of American history entitled “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins describes how right from the start in the Constitutional Convention, the interests of the creditor class were those that were represented, while the debtor class was largely shut out.

And one can track that history right on up to our modern times today.

At p.150 of “The United States Supreme Court: The Pursuit of Justice” by Christopher Tomlins. for example, we find as follows:

The farmers organized themselves and by 1892 had reached out to labor leaders in order to form the Populist Party, which called for shorter industrial workdays and a graduated income tax.

The Populists also wanted to alter the political economy of the United States; as one explained in 1895, “The way to avoid railroad ownership of the government is to have government ownership of the railroads.”

Popular demands for action produced new state and national regulations that were in turn challenged before the Fuller Court.

The justices found themselves most divided, and most hated, in their efforts to cope with regulations that obviously redistributed wealth or interfered with contractual relations.

Opposition to such legislation reflected uneasiness with new governmental forms, such as the railroad commission, and with new understandings of the economy.

Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who ended his long career on the Court in 1892, once explained that political equality was what the founding fathers were referring to in the Declaration of Independence.

Economic equality was bad for two reasons.

First, because God-given human faculties varied naturally, “there are many species of luxury” – such as art, literature and music – “which the great mass of mankind are incapable of enjoying.”

Second, the redistribution of wealth was counterproductive, for it “would smother enterprise, produce listlessness,” and make one man dependent on others.

Then we jump ahead to the “Roaring Twenties,” the era of Calvin Coolidge, just before the Great Depression, where we have as follows from Wikipedia:

During Coolidge’s presidency, the United States experienced a period of rapid economic growth known as the “Roaring Twenties.”

He left the administration’s industrial policy in the hands of his activist Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, who energetically used government auspices to promote business efficiency and develop airlines and radio.

Coolidge disdained regulation, and demonstrated this by appointing commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission who did little to restrict the activities of businesses under their jurisdiction.

The regulatory state under Coolidge was, as one biographer described it, “thin to the point of invisibility.”

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When Donald Trump talks about making America great again, I believe it is the “Roaring Twenties” that he is referring to, which takes us to p.333 of “Wealth and Democracy” by Kevin Phillips, as follows:

After the egalitarian milieus of the New Deal, the Eisenhower years and even the early sixties, self interest, greed, and consumption made a major comeback during the Reagan years.

The new president said that, “More than anything else, I want to see the United States remain a country where someone can get rich.”

His Treasury Secretary, Donald Regan, acknowledged their hope of recapturing the 1920s, saying, “We’re not going back to high-button shoes and celluloid collars.”

“But the President does want to go back to many of the financial methods and economic incentives that brought about the prosperity of the Coolidge period.”

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Risk arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, one of their paladins, told cheering business school audiences that, “Anyone who thinks greed is a bad thing, I want to tell you that it’s not a bad thing.”

“And I think that in our system, everybody should be a little bit greedy.”

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As those of us with working memories recall, Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937) was a former American stock trader who is notable for his prominent role in an insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States during the mid-1980s.

And that brings us forward in time to Donald Trump, and a CNN article entitled “Trump proposes massive one-time tax on the rich” by Phil Hirschkorn/CNN on November 9, 1999, as follows:

NEW YORK (CNN) — Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has a plan to pay off the national debt, grant a middle class a tax cut, and keep Social Security afloat: tax rich people like himself.

Trump, a prospective candidate for the Reform Party presidential nomination, is proposing a one-time “net worth tax” on individuals and trusts worth $10 million or more.

By Trump’s calculations, his proposed 14.25 percent levy on such net worth would raise $5.7 trillion and wipe out the debt in one full swoop.

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Now, is that a case of Trump being a hated “progressive?”

Sounds it to me, anyway.

Getting back to that article:

The U.S. national debt decreased by $9.7 billion in September but remains at $5.66 trillion, according to the latest U.S. Treasury figures.

The net worth tax is the cornerstone of Trump’s economic plan released Tuesday morning.

“No one has put forward a plan to make this country entirely debt free as we enter the next millenium,” Trump said in a written statement.

“The plan I am proposing today does not involve smoke and mirrors, phony numbers, financial gimmicks, or the usual economic chicanery you usually find in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac,” Trump said.

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Oh, really, Donald, do tell, dude.

Now Disneyland-on-the-Potomac has moved to Florida, to Mar-A-Lago, while nothing else has changed, except for Trump’s spots, of course.

And back to CNN we go once more:

Trump would exempt the value of an individual’s principal home from the net worth total.

“By my calculations, 1 percent of Americans, who control 90 percent of the wealth in this country, would be affected by my plan,” Trump said.

“The other 99 percent of the people would get deep reductions in their federal income taxes,” he said.

Eliminating the national debt would save the federal government $200 billion a year in interest payments, Trump said.

He proposes to earmark half the savings for middle class tax cuts, and the other half for Social Security.

Trump said depositing $100 billion annually in the Social Security trust fund would generate $3 trillion “over the next 30-years, when the trust fund is scheduled to go broke” and instead keep the fund “solvent through the next century.”

The tax also would lead to the repeal the current federal inheritance tax “which really hurts farmers and small businessman and women more than anything else,” Trump said.

Trump, whose own net worth is an estimated $5 billion, says the wealthy would not suffer if his economic plan were enacted.

“Personally this plan would cost me hundreds of millions of dollars, but in all honesty, it’s worth it,” Trump said.

Trump predicts his debt elimination combined with his tax cuts would trigger a 35 to 40 percent boost in economic activity, with more business start-ups, more jobs, and more prosperity.

“It is a win-win for the American people, an idea no conventional politician would have the guts to put forward,” Trump said.

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And of course, we today know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is as far from a conventional politician as one can get, and still be considered to be in the same galaxy in space the rest of us inhabit.

So can Trump save us today from this long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us?

Stay tuned, more on that subject is yet to come, from this same station, so don’t touch that dial!

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming after this break for station identification.

Yes, they did, Joseph Corcoran, although I would seriously doubt that Donald Trump is aware of that reality.

And as to policy, Trump is scatter-shot, all over the board, so it is hard to determine exactly what it is that he is trying to replicate, other than using the powers of government to make his rich friends richer, which anyone who has studied the federal government over time knows is a common practice in Washington. D.C.

Wrong. There were a number of causes of the Great Depression, which, because of FDR’s New Deal and related economic policies (killing livestock and disposing of the carcasses simply to raise prices to farmers?), lasted at least eight years beyond Herbert Hoover’s term in office. Some of the causes resulted from the disastrous economic effects of the Great War, after which the US lent money to the former belligerents and was either not repaid or was paid in inflated currency. Germany deliberately inflated the mark for this purpose. Another primary cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which made all goods coming into the US more expensive.

The Trump administration’s policy IS mistaken in this area. Some US industries cannot be successfully restored.

Useless and expensive newly-created government agencies added to the problem in the ’30s .
A recession was due around 1929, of course, as was the 2008 recession, partly caused by Dubya’s “Everybody should own a home” policy.

There have been a few dumber presidents than Dubya, but not many. Obama’s term did little to alleviate the situation; like FDR, he added agencies and regulations which stifled an economy that could have recovered slowly on its own.

Of course, the US will experience future recessions, but it won’t be because Trump is the fool Dubya was, nor is he the leftist statist that Obama proved to be We don’t hear much from either of them now.

Thanks for commenting, Don Green, and while we don’t hear much from Obama, that hardly means he is not around.

Just recently, The Hill had an article concerning Obama entitled “Obama: Pelosi will be speaker again after November midterms” by Brett Samuels on 30 June 2018, as follows:

Former President Barack Obama voiced support during a fundraiser on Friday for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to lead the Democrats in the House after this year’s midterm elections.

Politico reported in Playbook that Obama spoke at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee event in northern California, which Pelosi co-hosted.

“I think everybody knows how much I love Nancy Pelosi.”

“So … Paul’s alright,” Obama joked, according to Politico.

“But Nancy, I believe is one of the greatest speakers we ever had and will once again be one of the greatest speakers we ever have after we get through this cycle,” he added.

Obama went on to praise Pelosi for her work while he was in office, according to Politico.

The former president’s backing comes amid a heated internal debate among Democrats over whether to support Pelosi as speaker should the party retake control of the House after the November midterms.

Questions over the future of the party intensified after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered a stunning upset victory over Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in a primary earlier this week.

Crowley was considered a potential candidate for speaker in the next congressional session.

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Obama knows it is about the money, Don Green, not what people like you might think, so he is going for the money as opposed to your opinion.

As to the “work” of Nancy Pelosi, that was discussed in somje detail right here in the Cape Charles Mirror on July 30, 2017, as follows:

Do the Democrats think we are all ignorant and incapable of reading the written word as it was presented to us in a Tribune Washington Bureau article entitled “Embattled Pelosi’s big survival weapon: money” by Anshu Siripurapu on 22 June 2017, wherein we were informed as follows as to who the Democrats really are, to wit:

Here’s a huge reason Nancy Pelosi maintains her iron grip on House Democrats, even after another bruising and in many party circles embarrassing election loss: her ability to raise lots and lots of money.

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Ah, yes, people – her ability to raise lots and lots of money, not for America, not for the American people, not for the needy, or the people really in need of a far better deal than they got this last recession, but for the Democrat party, which is in the game for itself.

Getting back to the Tribune Washington Bureau article, we have this:

The House Democratic leader has few current peers when it comes to pumping money into colleagues’ campaigns.

No other potential up-and-coming Democratic challenger to her leadership comes close.

Since 1990, she’s raised more than $9.2 million for party candidates, including $739,000 in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks contributions from candidate committees and affiliated PACs.

Pelosi’s office claims even loftier triumphs, saying she’s raised more than $500 million for Democrats since entering the party leadership in the early 2000s, including $141.5 million in the 2015-2016 cycle.

Big donors to the party’s congressional campaign committee were also available to Pelosi through her “Speaker’s Cabinet’program, which gave them special access to the Democratic leader.

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Now, as you ponder who the Democrats really are, focus in on that last sentence above, and give it some real thought for a moment as you ask yourself the vital existential question of “What is wrong with that picture” – Big donors to the party’s congressional campaign committee were also available to Pelosi through her “Speaker’s Cabinet’ program, which gave them special access to the Democratic leader.

Special access, people.

Now, wouldn’t that be GREAT DEAL if every American could have it, special access to the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and not just the big donors to the Democrat party?

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So don’t count Hussein Obama out of the game, Don Green.

As to Smoot-Hawley being a cause of the Great Depression is debatable.

In fact, at first, the tariff seemed to be a success.

According to historian Robert Sobel, “Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased sharply.”

However, larger economic problems loomed in the guise of weak banks.

When the Creditanstalt of Austria failed in 1931, the global deficiencies of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff became apparent.

With respect to that failure, and those times, in 1820, nine years before the presidency of Trump hero Andrew Jackson, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild established the first bank in Vienna, then the capital of the Austrian Empire, and in the course of early industrialisation, the Rothschild bank financed large development projects, such as the building of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway to the Moravian mining regions, while Rothschild also acted as a generous lender to Austrian state chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich and granted copious credits to the Bohemian and Hungarian aristocracy.

The business situation for the Rothschild bank dramatically changed with Austria’s defeat in the First World War and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and empire.

In the late 1920s, a principal debtor, the Steyr-Werke AG, faced financial difficulties, with bad loans leading to a drain on finances.

In October 1929, the Schober government compelled the allegedly well-financed Credit-Anstalt to assume liabilities, which together with the simultaneous Wall Street Crash led to the financial imbalance of the then-largest Austrian credit provider.

Creditanstalt had to declare bankruptcy on 11 May 1931.

This was one of the first major bank failures that initiated the Great Depression.

The firm’s bankruptcy and its impact in producing a major global banking crisis provided a major propaganda opportunity for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party: it allowed them to further blame Jews for German and international economic and social troubles.

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As you can see, Don Green, there quite a different story is told about the cause of the Great Depression.

In fact, monetarists such as Milton Friedman, who emphasize the central role of the money supply in causing the depression, note that the Smoot–Hawley Act only had a contributory effect on the entire U.S. economy.

We come across the name Milton Friedman in the Marketwatch article “Bernanke’s helicopter could move to new altitude – Key Jackson Hole question: What more can, and will, the Fed do?” by Greg Robb on Aug. 25, 2010, as follows:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — In an all-out effort to get the economy moving again, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may be getting ready to take his money-creating helicopter to a new altitude.

(Friedman had argued hypothetically that a central bank could drop currency from a helicopter to stimulate spending.)

Nearly eight years on from that speech, Alan Greenspan’s successor is due Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern to deliver another vital keynote at the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., with the straightforward title, “The Economic Outlook and the Federal Reserve’s Policy Response.”

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And again in the Marketwatch article “Voodoo Economics: The Subtle Side Effects of Quantitative Easing” by Satyajit Das on Apr. 21, 2011, as follows:

Milton Friedman famously argued that “helicopter drops” of money could be used to encourage spending and avoid deflation.

A student of economic history and an acolyte of Friedman, Ben Bernanke restated the principle in 2002 arguing that “under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.”

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As to making America great again, in a PRESIDENTIAL REPORT CARD for the Hoover Institute, Milton Friedman on the State of the Union with Milton Friedman on Wednesday, February 10, 1999, Friedman was very much for the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, as follows:

Recorded on Wednesday, February 10, 1999

ROBINSON Milton Friedman, we are in the sixth year of the Clinton Administration, the nation is at peace, the economy is booming, the federal government has gone from a budget deficit of 290 billion dollars in 1992, the year Bill Clinton was elected, to a surplus of at least 76 billion dollars for this year.

Don’t you want to give Bill Clinton an A?

FRIEDMAN (laughs) No, I want to give the economy an A.

ROBINSON Give the economy an A.

How much credit does he deserve?

FRIEDMAN Well, there’s only one way in which I believe he deserves some credit.

Because you have a Democrat in the White House and Republicans control the Congress, it’s hard to get any laws passed, and that’s been a great advantage.

The source of our prosperity in my opinion dates back to Mr. Reagan’s reductions in tax rates…

ROBINSON 1982.

FRIEDMAN …1982, and deregulation during the Reagan Administration, also go down to the 1986 Tax Act which eliminated a lot of interventions, unfortunately which have been creeping back in.

And that unleashed a private enterprise boom which we’re still benefitting from.

ROBINSON We’re not in the sixth year of the Clinton expansion, we’re in the seventeenth year of the Reagan boom.

FRIEDMAN Exactly.

The Reagan— I won’t call it a boom, because it really hasn’t been a boom, it’s been a very good, healthy expansion.

ROBINSON Steady, sustainable…

FRIEDMAN It’s a boom in the stock market, but so far as the economy is concerned the average rate of growth is not out of line with what it’s been in the past many times.

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As was stated above, Reagan was copying the “Greed is Good” policies of Calvin Cooledge, which takes us “Causes of the Great Depression” by Sarah Carroll, as follows:

The stock market crash in October 1929 is believed to be the immediate cause of the Great Depression, but there were many other factors and long-term causes that developed in the years prior to the depression.

The 1920’s may have been prosperous for some Americans, but the growing prosperity was actually weakening the economy.

Many US citizens were never participating in the boom from the start.

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Same as today, Don Green, same as today.

Getting back to the cause of the Great Depression:

There were some wealthy individuals, but 60% of people were living below the poverty line.

The American farms and factories produced large amounts of goods and products during the prosperity before the Depression.

On average, people’s wages stayed the same even as prices for these goods soared.

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That is very similar or that same as today, as well, as we see from the Marketwatch article “U.S. adds 213,000 jobs in June as unemployment makes surprise rise” by Jeffry Bartash published July 6, 2018, as follows:

Hourly wages rose a modest 5 cents to $26.98.

The yearly rate of pay increases was unchanged at 2.7%.

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Getting back to the causes of the Great Depression:

The factories and farms still continued to produce at the same rate, but demand for their products was decreasing.

There was a major unequal distribution of income that led to the richest 1% of Americans owning approximately 40% of the country’s wealth (Matthews, 2).

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There, Don Green, is another glaring similarity to today, which has been exacerbated by Trump’s recent tax cuts for the very rich.

And then we come to here:

In the 1920’s more people invested in the stock market than ever before.

Between May 1928 and September 1929, the average prices of stocks rose 40 percent.

Stock prices rose so quickly that at the end of the decade, some people became rich overnight by buying and selling stocks (Matthews, 3).

People could buy stocks for only a 10% down payment.

Between 1920 and 1929 the number of shareowners rose from 4 million to 20 million (Temin, 45).

With artificially low interest rates and a booming economy, people and companies invested in over-priced stocks.

During 1928 and 1929, the prices of many stocks went up faster than the value of the companies the stocks represented.

“It was like pouring gasoline onto a fire – the flames rose up, no lasting fuel was added, but the economy sure looked great” (Matthews, 3).

Buying on credit was huge problem in the 1920’s.

Since the 20’s was a period of great economic boom, not many people took the future into consideration.

Many people bought expensive luxury items using money they did not have.

Installment buying allowed people to make a monthly, weekly, or yearly payment on an item that they wanted or needed.

Buying on credit and installment buying left millions of people in debt.

Installment buying allowed lenders to repossess an item if the borrower missed just one payment.

People may have stopped making new purchases to reduce the risk of losing things they already had bought on credit.

There was a big drop in consumer spending, which lowered prices, which meant that farmers, businesses, and nations could not repay their debts.

Rising debt led to restrictions on new loans, which led to scarce credit, less borrowing, lower prices, more bankruptcies, and so on (Samuelson, 1).

The spiral downward of trade, investment, people’s confidence, and the economy began.

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As you say, and I don’t dispute it, Dubya might have been dumb, but I believe Trump is quite ignorant.

Where that ignorance will take us is the question right now.

So, Don Green, do you think Trump is the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us?

It is, of course, almost impossible to answer the question, “do you think Trump is the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us,” precisely because we do not really have a clue as to whose side Trump is on here, besides his own, and when he blathers on about “making America great again,” other than the Roaring Twenties, or the period right after WWII, when the Democrats were running the country while the Republicans looked in from the sidelines, it is difficult to determine when America was ever “great.”

It certainly was not “great” right after the Declaration of Independence, nor was it “great” at the time the Constitution was ratified.

To the contrary, while it had plenty of land, and potential for growth, the truth is that it was broke and greatly in debt, and in need of foreign money to keep itself going, primarily from the British and the Dutch, who had the money America need, but did not have.

In fact, in the field of finance, important relations were established between fledging America and the Dutch very early on, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and in 1782, the year before the Revolution ended, future American president John Adams obtained the first loan for Congress, five million guilders, from three Amsterdam banking houses.

In the latter years of the eighteenth century The Netherlands was still the money market of Europe, and the fact that Amsterdam granted the first loan to the rebels was of great help to their prestige and cause.

These financial ties continued to be maintained after the independence of the colonies was recognized by the treaty of 1783.

By 1794, the total amount lent to America by Holland had risen to thirty million guilders, or twelve million dollars, which formed the entire foreign debt of the United States.

At the time of the American Revolution, Holland had been an ally of England for a hundred years, and the Stadholder in charge of Holland was a friend and relative of the English king.

So, the City of Amsterdam started its negotiations with the Americans in secret, with a plan being drafted for a treaty of trade and friendship to become effective as soon as Holland would recognize the independence of the United States.

But by then relations between Holland and England had deteriorated still further on the issue of the Dutch trade with the American rebels, so that when England got hold of a copy of the secret treaty, it used it as a pretext to declare war on The Netherlands.

The outcome of the war Holland had fought with the new American republic against England, naturally did not boost the stock of Dutch progressives at home, so that as mentioned above, for years Holland tottered on the brink of a civil war, and when in 1787 the Dutch progressives who called their party “the Patriots” tried to topple the aristocratic regime, neighboring Prussia intervened, with Prussian soldiers invading the country, and restoring the oligarchy, which forced the leading Patriots to flee.

So much for the “progressives” and patriots in Holland!

Getting back to when America might have once been “great,” given as how Trump wants to “make it great again,” right after the ratification of the United States Constitution, the visions for any possible “greatness” America might have were highly divided, just as they are again today.

Alexander Hamilton, who set in motion the “capitalist” system in this country that has allowed Donald Trump, who has claimed his net worth exceeds $10 billion, to amass a fortune, wanted New York, Donald Trump’s home town, to become the nation’s capital, which aroused the opposition of Virginia planter and perpetual debtor Tommy Jefferson.

The enemies of Hamilton saw New York, the city of Trump, writes author Ron Chernow, as “an Anglophile bastion dominated by bankers and merchants who would contaminate the republican experiment.”

Today, Trump’s New York City, remains exactly that – a bastion dominated by bankers and merchants like Trump who have in the intervening years thoroughly contaminated the “Republican experiment” envisioned for this nation by some of the so-called “founding fathers” at the beginning of its history.

So who really is this Donald Trump who is supposed to be “the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us?”

Is he a fool like George W. Bush before him?

Is he a moron?

Or is he a visionary mystic like Ronald Reagan, who made America great by adopting the policies of Republican lawyer from New England Calvin Coolidge, who succeeded to the American presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923?

Staying with the existential question of “do you think Trump is the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us,” we have to also face the fact that we do not really have a clue as of yet as to the totality of the “plan to destroy us” that Trump is supposed to be the one man in all of America who can protect us from.

And, of course, if there is a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us, it is likely to be held quite close to the vest of the Democrats/Liberals/progressives who plan to destroy us, so we won’t be able to mobilize a resistance in time to stop them from destroying us, so it looks very much to me, at least, as if we are doing nothing but shooting in the dark here, something Trump himself has gained a reputation for – “READY, FIRE, AIM!”

So what do we know?

Do we know anything?

Well, we do know some things, so we are not completely in the dark here.

For example, we have an op-ed in the New York Times by American economist Paul Robin Krugman, born February 28, 1953, who is currently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times, on April 26, 2018, as follows:

America hasn’t always, or even usually, been governed by the best and the brightest; over the years, presidents have employed plenty of knaves and fools.

But I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like the collection of petty grifters and miscreants surrounding Donald Trump.

Price, Pruitt, Zinke, Carson and now Ronny Jackson: At this point, our default assumption should be that there’s something seriously wrong with anyone this president wants on his team.

end quotes

But does that really inform us of anything, other than that Trump is pretty mush same old, same old when it comes to what the American people want in the White House as their “leader?”

Does who a president surrounds himself with really tell us anything about the man himself?

Or does it tell us much more about the American people, whoever on earth they may be today, outside of a bunch of people who don’t mind or even desire to be governed by a collection of petty grifters and miscreants surrounding Donald Trump?

Getting back to Paul Robin Krugman for the moment, the American economist who is currently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times, in 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography, so it seems as if the dude might be someone whose word we can at least consider here, if not totally trust, given that he does write for the New York Times, a rag whose veracity as been n question over the years, as we all remember, especially with regard to the invasion of Iraq by small Bush and Dick Cheney back when.

With respect to his Nobel Prize, and this is relevant in the light of Trump’s incipient trade wars with the rest of the planet, the Prize Committee cited Krugman’s work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Does Trump have anyone on his team who knows as much?

So far, from what I have been able to glean, that answer is no; Trump is just shooting from the hip, hoping his rounds fired are staying away from his own feet and groin area.

As to Krugman, he was previously a professor of economics at MIT, and later at Princeton University, where he retired from in June 2015, and holds the title of professor emeritus.

Krugman also holds the title of Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and was President of the Eastern Economic Association in 2010, and is among the most influential economists in the world.

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance), liquidity traps, and currency crises, and is the author or editor of 27 books, including scholarly works, textbooks, and books for a more general audience, and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes.

In addition, he has also written several hundred columns on economic and political issues for The New York Times, Fortune and Slate, and a 2011 survey of economics professors named him their favorite living economist under the age of 60.

As a commentator, Krugman has written on a wide range of economic issues including income distribution, taxation, macroeconomics, and international economics.

As to which side he might be on here, Krugman considers himself a modern liberal, referring to his books, his blog on The New York Times, and his 2007 book “The Conscience of a Liberal,” and his popular commentary has attracted widespread attention and comments, both positive and negative.

So, is he a part of the long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us?

And more importantly, among the collection of petty grifters and miscreants surrounding Donald Trump, is there anyone who match wits with Krugman to counter him?

With respect to the long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us, which is so far undefined, and perhaps undefinable, perhaps a hint or glimmer of it came out just yesterday in a scathing and blistering rejection of Trump’s supreme court pick by New York State’s Young Andy Cuomo, who is believed to be the most Democrat/Liberal/progressive governor in the nation if not on the face of the planet, as well as the prospective Democrat presidential front-runner against Trump in 2020, to wit:

July 9, 2018

Albany, NY

Statement from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on the Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court

Statement

“As a member of the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh would deliver a devastating blow to American values.”

end quotes

Now, people, regardless of where you might find yourselves on the political spectrum, you have to admit that Young Andy Cuomo has the bit in his teeth right there and he is running with it, as the old timers out in the countryside are wont of saying, remembering as they do those by-gone days when a farm horse would get the bit in its teeth and run away with a wagonload of hay for God-alone knows what reason, assuming a farm horse even needs a reason to run away with a wagonload of hay.

Young Andy’s blistering diatribe against Trump’s court pick does not end there, however, as we see from the following:

“Kavanaugh is an extreme conservative with a clear partisan record.”

“He would put our rights and democratic priorities in jeopardy, including the Affordable Care Act, protections for the environment, organized labor, LGBTQ rights and the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

end quotes

So, people, sides are clearly being taken here, and lines are clearly being drawn, as again, we see from the following:

“Kavanaugh opined that the nation’s chief executive should be exempt from ‘time-consuming and distracting’ lawsuits and investigations, which ‘would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.'”

“In New York, we are taking action to defend our progressive values, including fighting to codify the protections of Roe. v. Wade into State law, taking action to protect labor unions, advancing LGBTQ rights, and enacting the nation’s strongest environmental policy.”

“We in New York will not stand by as President Trump attempts to use the Supreme Court as the political arm of the presidency to advance his extreme conservative agenda of division. ”

“The progress of this nation will not be rolled back without a fight.”

“I urge New Yorkers to make their voices heard and call on the Senate not to confirm Kavanaugh.”

“And no matter what happens in Washington, I promise you this: I will fight like hell to do everything in my power to protect the rights of the people of the State of New York.”

end quotes

That, of course is pure political bull**** that Democrat/Liberal/progressive governor Young Andy Cuomo will “fight like hell to do everything in my power to protect the rights of the people of the State of New York,” as is his statement about enacting the nation’s strongest environmental policy, but hey, this is politics, and you have to admit, they do make for good sound bites on TWITTER, regardless of how false and empty they really are.

As always seems to be the case with what passes for politics in this country today, there are some interesting dynamics going on here between Young Andy Cuomo, the New York state governor who has set himself up as the “opposition” to Trump, and Trump, himself, who actually is fairly heavily bought in to Young Andy, owning a piece of the rock, so to speak, as we see from the HuffPost article “Cynthia Nixon Ratchets Up Criticism Of Andrew Cuomo For Taking Trump’s Donations – Boosted by progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win, Nixon is laying into the governor over old contributions” by Daniel Marans on 07/05/2018, as follows:

New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is escalating her criticism of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) for taking donations from President Donald Trump after Cuomo announced Thursday that he would keep the years-old contributions.

“Governor Cuomo cannot serve as a defense against Donald Trump when he’s accepted tens of thousands of dollars from him,” said Nixon campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt.

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Now, this is all more than passing strange for several reasons, starting with this fairy tale that as governor of corrupt New York state, Young Andy Cuomo can “serve as a defense against Donald Trump,” who happens to be the president of the United States of America.

Where do these hack politicians come up with this stuff from, anyway?

And more to the point, why are people so stupid as to believe a word of it?

It’s like Young Andy bellowing this political horsecrap through his nose the other day, to wit:

“And no matter what happens in Washington, I promise you this: I will fight like hell to do everything in my power to protect the rights of the people of the State of New York.”

end quotes

Oh, really, Young Andy, do tell, and what are you going to do about it – secede from the union?

Getting back to the strange dynamics here:

In a fundraising email on Thursday, Nixon also invoked the contributions, asking supporters to “counter Andrew Cuomo’s warchest full of Trump money” with their own donations to her.

“This is nothing more than a cheap distraction from a campaign gasping for air.”

No governor has fought harder against Donald Trump than Progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo?

Oh, really, again.

I wonder where I was that day. because I seem to have missed it.

And here we come to the bidness relationship between Trump and Young Andy, as follows:

Cuomo received a total of $64,000 from Trump between 2001 and 2009, a period during which he was an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate and then attorney general of New York.

end quotes

It is the money Young Andy took from Trump while Young Andy was attorney general that is of interest here, not so much the money Trump might have plowed into Young Andy’s failed bid to be state governor before Young Andy was attorney general.

What did Trump get in return for his investment in Young Andy Cuomo as NYS attorney general?

Young Andy’s silence concerning Trump’s bidness deals back then?

Getting back to the HuffPost article:

The governor responded to a question about the contributions on Thursday at an unrelated event in Brooklyn.

“I’m going to be deeply critical of him and keep the contributions,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo is positioning himself as a leading bulwark against the policies of the Trump administration.

end quotes

There, of course, is the opening salvo being fired in the presidential contest to take place two years from now in 2020, where presumably Young Andy Cuomo will be taking on Trump in what promises to be a no-holds-barred contest between two down and dirty political brawlers from New York City.

So stay tuned for more developments on that front as they happen as we next turn to the subject of does Donald Trump take all his economic advice from idiots and morons?

Speaking of the opening salvo being fired in the presidential contest to take place two years from now in 2020, where presumably Young Andy Cuomo, the Progressive Democrat governor of corrupt New York state will be taking on Trump in what promises to be a no-holds-barred contest between two down and dirty political brawlers from New York City, for those unfamiliar with him, here Young Andy can be seen marching with his massive army of political supporters, all of whom are ready to take Trump out of the White House to replace him with Young Andy, who is their acknowledged champion, so if nothing else, it should be quite a colorful presidential campaign season:

If Trump is indeed the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us, and if anyone embodies that plan to destroy us, it is Young Andy Cuomo of corrupt New York State, then who does he have to counter the economic advisors Young Andy has?

Does Donald Trump take all his economic advice from idiots and morons, or does he make it up as he goes?

Let’s take a look, starting with the recent Marketwatch article “Treasury rates are low due to belief in ‘new normal’ theory, says Trump’s top economist” by Greg Robb published July 11, 2018, where we learn as follows:

Long-term Treasury yields remain low despite the fiscal stimulus from the Trump tax cut because of a mistaken belief on Wall Street in the theory of the “new normal”, said Kevin Hassett, White House’s top economist.

end quotes

Actually, and not to fire a shot across this dude’s bow, but long-term Treasury yields remain low because people happen to be buying Treasurys.

And yields were on the rise until Trump started his trade war with the rest of the world.

Getting back to the Marketwatch article:

“The previous administration’s economists…had convinced everybody that we’re in this new normal,” that had nothing to do with President Barack Obama’s economic policies and was “exogenous,” Hassett said on Wednesday during a moderated discussion at the Summit on the Economy sponsored by the Economic Innovation Group and the Governor’s Woods Foundation.

end quotes

Is everyone following that?

Or is it the type of inane gibberish one would expect to hear coming out of the mouth of a babbling idiot?

“Enough of the market was convinced by the new normal guys that we’re stuck slowly [growing] forever, that one good year of 3% hasn’t really changed their minds about growth five years from now,” Hassett said.

“The question is – is it a blip?” he asked, and then went on to say that it wouldn’t be.

“What is going to happen is we’re going to have 3% growth this year, we’re going to have 3% growth next year and we’re going to ask ourselves next year about the year after that,” he said.

“And as that happens, one could expect an effect on the yield curve,” he added.

end quotes

You have to admit that if nothing else, the dude does have a flair for fancy speech.

But getting back to some reality:

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly rose above 3% in mid-May, a seven-year high, but has since fallen back below 2.9% since mid-June.

The yield gap, or yield curve, between 2-year Treasurys and the 10-year note, sensitive to inflation expectations and market fears, are at the narrowest since August of 2007.

end quotes

As a benchmark, consider that the Great Recession started four month later in December of 2007.

The term “new normal” in these circumstances was coined by Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz, and was popularized by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who termed it “secular stagnation.”

The basic idea is that slowing population growth would mean low investment demand contributing to slowing rate of economic expansion.

end quotes

So who on earth is Kevin Hassett?

According to his bio on the handy reference Wikipedia, Kevin Allen Hassett is an American economist and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers who is known for his work on tax policy and for coauthoring the book “Dow 36,000,” published in 1999.

Prior to becoming Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Hassett was the State Farm James Q. Wilson Chair in American Politics and Culture and Director of Research for Domestic Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and he was also John McCain’s chief economic adviser in the 2000 presidential primaries and an economic adviser to the campaigns of George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election and McCain in the presidential election of 2008, as well as being among Mitt Romney’s economic advisers for the 2012 presidential campaign.

So clearly, the dude knows his way around Republican political circles, and on top of that, like Trump, the dude is also a celebrated author, so no wonder Trump would pick the dude to be his own personal economic advisor – the Hassett dude has cachet.

So who is he really?

According to his Wikipedia bio, the Hassett dude got his Washington cachet by receiving a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and then he was an assistant professor of economics at Columbia Business School from 1989 to 1993 and an associate professor there from 1993 to 1994.

From 1992 to 1997, Hassett was an economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and he also served as a policy consultant to the United States Treasury Department during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

Trump, of course, was a Democrat when Bill Clinton, husband of Hillary, was president, so the fact that Hassett served as a policy consultant to the United States Treasury Department during the Bill Clinton administration wouldn’t confront Trump any, especially as everyone knows how well the U.S. economy did under Bill Clinton, with Hillary’s behind-the-scenes guidance.

Moving right along here, Hassett joined AEI as a resident scholar in 1997 where he worked on tax policy, fiscal policy, energy issues, and investing in the stock market, collaborating with R. Glenn Hubbard on work on the budget surplus, income inequality, and tax reform.

Hassett published papers and articles on capital taxation, the consistency of tax policy, returns on energy conservation investments, corporate taxation, telecommunications competition, the effects of taxation on wages, dividend taxation, and carbon taxes.

Then, in 2003, Hassett was named director of economic policy studies at AEI, and during his tenure at AEI, he became an increasingly prolific popular writer, penning articles in major newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and he also writes a monthly column for National Review and, since 2005, a weekly column for Bloomberg.

But all of that is nothing compared to his crowning literary achievement, his coauthoring with James K. Glassman of the now-famous and much celebrated economic tome “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market,” which Donald Trump is said to have read from cover to cover several times, forming as it is said to do Trump’s own investment strategy which has made Trump a multi-billionaire, so that it would stand to reason that this is the dude Trump would want by his side when it comes to making those tough economic calls, as Hassett did in that above Marketwatch article on bond yields.

“Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market” was published in 1999 before the dot-com bubble burst, but hey, is that really something we should hold against the dude?

Afterall, if you look at the performance record of economists, they make TV weathermen look accurate by comparison, so why should we hold this Hassett dude to a higher standard?

Getting back to “Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market,” the book’s catchy title was based on a calculation that, in the absence of the equity premium, stock prices would be approximately four times as high as they actually were.

In its introduction, Glassman and Hassett wrote that the book “will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap…”

“If you are worried about missing the market’s big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late.”

“Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,273.00 on the day of the book’s publication on October 1, 1999, peaked at 11,722.98 105 days later, then declined 37.8% through October 9, 2002.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman argued on his faculty website that the book contained basic arithmetic errors and was “a very silly book” but regarded Hassett’s role as co-author as a “youthful indiscretion.”

Statistician and blogger Nate Silver described the book as “charlatanic” and suggested on empirical grounds that the authors had failed to notice that at the time of writing stock prices were “as overvalued as at literally any time in American history”.

end quotes

But should we really hold that against the dude?

He was just trying to sell a book, is all, like Trump, and as was said back on February 18, 1788
in the famous “Elihu” Essay, a writer is not obliged to furnish his readers with comprehension, and neither is there any law to oblige him to write comprehensible matter.

With respect to the bond market, and long-term bond yields, which Trump economic guru Kevin Allen Hassett, the American economist who is the Chair of the Trump Council of Economic Advisers told us remain low despite the fiscal stimulus from the Trump tax cut because of a mistaken belief on Wall Street in the theory of the “new normal,” which is hog ****, pure and simple, although it is a shot in the dark that probably sounds good as a theory to those who know nothing about how the U.S. economy actually functions, starting with Donald Trump, the Marketwatch article “Mortgage rates inch up as housing market braces for slowing momentum” by Andrea Riquier published July 13, 2018, had this to say on the subject:

Mortgage rates track the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, which has been under pressure as investors snatch up safe haven assets in the face of an escalating global trade war.

end quote

For another view, the Marketwatch article “2-year Treasury yield posts biggest weekly jump in a month” by Sunny Oh published July 13, 2018, provides as follows:

The flight to quality kept a lid on yields for long-end debt for the week despite a six-year high in consumer prices.

Long-dated Treasury yields struggled to take off this week when the U.S. released its list of tariffs on $200 million in Chinese imports late Tuesday, keeping up the trade spat between the two economic powerhouses and stoking appetite for haven assets like U.S. government paper.

The yield gap between the 2-year note and the 10-year note has thinned to about 25 basis points, or a quarter of a percentage point, from 30 basis points at the start of the week.

end quotes

Search as I might, outside of Trump economic guru Kevin Allen Hassett, the American economist who is the Chair of the Trump Council of Economic Advisers, I couldn’t find anyone else saying long-term Treasury yields remain low despite the fiscal stimulus from the Trump tax cut because of a mistaken belief on Wall Street in the theory of the “new normal,” but that don’t mean the Hassett dude can’t believe it’s true, despite how silly and asinine it sounds, especially in the light of the fact that long-term bond yields are falling because of Trump’s trade wars, which this Hassett dude can’t criticize if he wants to keep his job.

And the news on 13 July 2018 about the yield gap between the 2-year note and the 10-year note having thinned to about 25 basis points, or a quarter of a percentage point, from 30 basis points at the start of the week takes us to another of the economic gurus in Trump’s stable of economic gurus, as we see in the Marketwatch story “It’s been decades since the White House has warned the Fed the way Kudlow just did” by Greg Robb published June 29, 2018, where we are informed as follows:

Powell (Trump economic guru picked to head the federal reserve) has signaled the Fed will continue to hike rates at a once-per-quarter pace, despite warnings from doves at the central bank that the market is signalling caution.

In particular, the yield curve has been flattening, with the spread between 2-year notes and 10-year notes at the lowest level since 2007.

The curve is a line that plots yields across all debt maturities.

It typically slopes upward.

A flatter curve can signal concern about the outlook.

An inverted curve is an accurate predictor of recessions.

Powell and other Fed officials have said that times are different and the yield curve may not be the signal it once was.

end quotes

Now, there is a very interesting statement about the yield curve, people, whether anyone realizes it or not, especially in light of the fact that the Great Recession started in December of 2007.

Which raises the important existential question of if the yield curve is actually no longer the signal it once was, and you would think this Powell dude who was a direct appointee of Donald Trump would have a clue if anybody did, then is it a signal of anything, anymore?

Or has it become totally meaningless?

And the answer is that nobody seems to know anymore what it might or might not mean, especially all these unelected political hacks on the federal reserve board, as we see from this comment in that same article, to wit:

But St. Louis Fed President James Bullard on Thursday said he didn’t know why the Fed wanted to “test this theory” by continuing to push short-term rates higher.

end quotes

And that is what had the panties of American financial analyst and former television personality serving as Director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump since 2018 Lawrence Alan Kudlow of The Kudlow Report and Kudlow & Cramer, affectionally known to all his many Wall Street friends and Donald Trump as “Kuddles,” who graduated from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, where he was a good tennis player, which is important if you want to get ahead in government as “Kuddles” Kudlow has so obviously done, as well as a member of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society, with a degree in history in 1969, all in a bunch in that article, where we were told as follows:

It has been a long time —the early 1990s in fact— since a White House tried to influence Federal Reserve policy the way Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow did on Friday.

In an interview with Fox Business Network, Kudlow jawboned the Fed, saying: “My hope is that the Fed, under its new management, understands that more people working and faster economic growth do not cause inflation.”

“My hope is that they understand that and that they will move very slowly,” he added.

end quotes

Think about that for a moment, if you will, people – one economic guru dude appointed by Trump to guide him on matters economic is questioning whether another economic guru dude appointed by Trump to head the federal reserve for Trump has a brain in his head.

Is that bizarre?

Or what?

Did Trump appoint a moron to head up the federal reserve?

It sure does look it from the comments of Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics, in that same article where he told us that “Kuddles” Kudlow was trying to “guide the Fed’s eyes” to the yield curve signal:

“I’m sure Larry was trying to send smoke signals.”

“He’s trying to explain it to them,” Brusca said.

end quote

WTF, people?

He’s trying to explain it to them?

What is up with that?

How come Trump put somebody in charge of the federal reserve who knows nothing about how the economy works?

So he wouldn’t be smarter than Trump, who knows even less?

And how did “Kuddles” Kudlow in his turn become so knowledgeable?

Let’s check it out together, what say:

“Kuddles” Kudlow began his career as a junior financial analyst at the New York Federal Reserve, so there we seem to have it.

But it don’t end there, because he soon left government to work on Wall Street at Paine Webber and Bear Stearns as a financial analyst, and then, in 1981, after previously volunteering and working for left-wing politicians and causes, Kudlow joined the administration of Ronald Reagan as associate director for economics and planning in the Office of Management and Budget.

Now, pause here for a moment, as we consider all these Russians literally taking over our government as the Mueller investigation is proving to us, and then ask yourself this important political question, to wit: what is Trump up to here with a flaming “LEFTIE” like “Kuddles” Kudlow as his economic advisor?

Is Trump planning to turn us into a socialist nation?

And getting back to “Kuddles the Leftie,” after leaving the Reagan Administration during the second term, Kudlow returned to Wall Street and Bear Stearns, serving as the firm’s chief economist from 1987 until 1994, and during that same time, he also advised the gubernatorial campaign of Christine Todd Whitman on economic issues.

Then, in the late 1990s, after a publicized battle with cocaine and alcohol addiction, Kudlow left Wall Street to become an economic media commentator, first with National Review and later hosting several shows on CNBC, and then he returned to politics in 2018, serving as Gary Cohn’s replacement at the National Economic Council for Trump.

So, people, what on earth is going on here with Trump and Kudlow?

Where is it that they are really trying to take us?

Is this some kind of left-wing plot on behalf of the long term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us and make us have to eat veggie patties, instead of real red meat?

Why Trump would openly have such a notorious left-winger as Lawrence Alan Kudlow of The Kudlow Report and Kudlow & Cramer, affectionally known to all his many Wall Street friends and Donald Trump as “Kuddles,” who graduated from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, where he was a good tennis player, which is important if you want to get ahead in government as “Kuddles” Kudlow has so obviously done, as well as a member of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society, with a degree in history in 1969, as his chief economic advisor, given the dynamics of the upcoming presidential contest in 2020, where Trump will be pitted against Young Andy Cuomo of New York, an avowed Bernie Sanders socialist with a huge following in the nation, that is a no-brainer.

In an adroit pivot to the left there with the selection of Kudlow, a darling of the left wing, Trump is pre-empting Cuomo’s support on socialist economic issues.

With Kudlow by his side, Trump will be able to advertise himself as further to the left than Cuomo, so he can steal Young Andy’s support in the liberal sanctuary city of New York City, where Cuomo’s massive base of support is, as we see from the parade video posted above, which the political insiders up this way are calling a preview of Cuomo’s triumphal march through Washington to the White House in 2020, to wit:

But hey, that is still in the future, so we have to be patient and wait for it to happen, because nothing happens before its time, no matter the effort to have it be different.

In the meantime, who in the heck is this Jerome Powell that trump has handed control of the federal reserve over to?

In a webpost on the website of Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics on Sunday, November 5, 2017, we find this pertinent question on the subject being posed, to wit:

Will Jay Powell do a good job of running the Board of Governors and the FOMC?

end quotes

From the way left-winger “Kuddles” Kudlow ripped into the dude in the recent Marketwatch story “It’s been decades since the White House has warned the Fed the way Kudlow just did” by Greg Robb published June 29, 2018, he clearly does not think so, but let’s see what the Stephen Williamson has to say about it:

He’s certainly not an obvious choice.

If Powell had not been appointed to the Board in 2011, nobody would be thinking of him as a candidate for the Chair’s job now.

Powell is a lawyer, with no formal training in economics (beyond the odd undergrad course), which puts him at a disadvantage in the Fed system.

end quotes

Well, there we can see the source of “Kuddles” Kudlow’s obvious discomfort with the dude, alright – the dude is a lawyer, which is already a strike against him, and he knows nothing about economics, besides, which means he won’t be ever seen as a threat to Trump, who also knows nothing about economics.

Getting back to the article on Powell:

On the up side, he has a willingness to learn:

“When he showed up at the Fed, he basically did not know much about macroeconomics or monetary policy,” says Seth Carpenter, chief U.S. economist at UBS who spent 15 years at the Fed, including time overlapping with Powell.

“He made a conscious decision to spend a lot of time with staff and colleagues to learn as deeply and completely as possible.”

So, Powell appears to be conscientious in seeking advice about things he doesn’t know much about.

end quotes

So that sounds like a positive about the dude, anyway – even if he knows nothing about macroeconomics or monetary policy, he’s at least willing to endeavor to persevere and give it the old college try, which takes us back to the Stephen Williamson post, as follows:

But, the Board may actually not be a great place to learn macroeconomics – the Board staff aren’t known for their independent thinking, for example.

Further, a Board Governor is not in the best position to learn, as he or she does not have a staff, and is dependent on more-or-less randomly assigned economists to get their work done.

Indeed, a Governor’s job is thankless in more ways than one.

He or she currently earns $179,700 per year, which is less than what a good Associate Professor in Economics is paid at a top research school.

But any of those salaries pale in comparison to what Powell had to be earning in the private sector, judging from his accumulated wealth, which appears to be between $20 million and $55 million.

So, to his credit, we can infer that Powell is genuinely interested in public service, otherwise he would still be in the private sector, further feathering his own nest.

At six years in, he has been at the job longer than is typical for Board Governors, who are appointed for 14 years, but rarely serve the full term, or anything close.

end quotes

So he sounds like a nice guy, anyway, but let’s see what else there is to learn about him, so we can see why he has “Kuddles” Kudlow, who knows probably more about economics than anyone else lashing out at him so:

What are Powell’s views on monetary policy?

He certainly has not been outspoken about it.

Brainard and Tarullo have had differences with the consensus view on the FOMC, and weren’t shy about talking about it.

Stan Fischer, given his long experience as an academic economist and central banker, certainly had a lot to say, and clearly had his own views on policy.

Powell, not so much.

A quick look through some of Powell’s speeches indicates that he typically did not speak specifically on monetary policy.

When he did, for example in a 2016 speech, it’s boilerplate – basically the consensus FOMC view.

I’ve seen Powell in action only once.

I know he said something, but I can’t remember what it was.

You might say my memory isn’t so great, but from the same occasion, I can remember key details of what Kocherlakota, Evans, Brainard, Lacker, Fischer, and Yellen were talking about.

Powell, in the general view, is collegial, reasonable, and intelligent.

But in instances where we need depth of experience in central banking and knowledge of economics, he’ll have to be looking to other people.

That’s worrisome.

end quotes

I think the fact that “Kuddles” Kudlow just recently gave him such a public tongue-lashing on monetary policy confirms the fact that Kudlow, and perhaps Trump himself are also finding that to be worrisome, although it is a bit late for that, which takes us back to the article, and this damn good question, as follows:

So why was Powell chosen?

Some have suggested that, relative to Yellen, Powell leans more toward less financial regulation.

That’s too deep for Trump, though, I think.

Most official high-level Trump appointments are of three types: (i) person bent on destroying the institution he or she is assigned to run; (ii) General – either active or retired; (iii) rich white male.

Powell is type (iii).

Just be thankful he isn’t type (i) or (ii).

But why didn’t Trump just stick with Janet Yellen?

After all, he claimed he liked her, right?

Well, Yellen is neither male nor rich, so she has two strikes against her, in Trump’s mind.

Further, Trump seems convinced that people he appoints owe him favors.

In Trumpland, an Obama appointee just can’t have the right predilections.

end quotes

I don’t know the Stephen Williamson dude personally, but reading through what he has posted on Powell, I find it hard to argue with is conclusions.

It is very hard to take seriously a dude like Trump economic guru Kevin Allen Hassett, the American economist who was totally blindsided by the Dot.com crash on 10 March 2000, and as a result is now the Chair of the Trump Council of Economic Advisers, who is saying long-term Treasury yields remain low despite the fiscal stimulus from the Trump tax cut because of a mistaken belief on Wall Street in the theory of the “new normal,” so I don’t, and let’s face it, the dude isn’t there to try and convince people like me who know better.

He is in there to be a public face for Trump on the Maria Bartiromo Show, or CNN or Meet The Press, where he can get away with spouting gibberish as he does, because they won’t know the difference.

So enough about him – like Trump, he is a lightweight.

But what about Jerome Powell?

Can he be dismissed so easily, given the power over our lives he has a federal reserve chairman, especially after being called out so publicly as he was recently by “Trump economic guru and TV personality “Kuddles” Kudlow over the flattening of the yield curve, which has “Kuddles” Kudlow’s panties all in a bunch, as if Kudlow were somebody on the Exxon Valdez screaming at the captain, “You’re steering too close to the rocks, you damn fool!”

So, did Trump appoint a damn fool to be head of the federal reserve?

Let’s go back to the website of Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics on Sunday, November 5, 2017, to see what else we might learn concerning Trump and Powell:

But is Yellen a great loss?

From my point of view, Yellen was successful in forging consensus on the FOMC.

Apparently, she didn’t force her views on others (unlike Greenspan, for example), and the FOMC seems to have operated in a collegial fashion for the last four years.

There were some dissents, but given the context there really wasn’t that much friction.

After all, the Fed was dealing with a unique situation – the large balance sheet that had been built up under Bernanke, and an unprecedentedly long period of essentially-zero overnight nominal interest rates.

Deciding when and how to unwind that was no easy task.

That said, Yellen’s training (PhD 1971) put her out of touch with modern macroeconomics, and she appeared to have a religious devotion to the Phillips curve.

With respect to the latter, she has plenty of company in the rest of the central banking community, but that’s no excuse.

As well, Yellen is well-known for her reluctance to appear in public – Adam Davidson’s characterization of her as a “master of thinking in public” is nonsense, I think.

As far as I can tell, thinking in public and walking on hot coals are more or less equivalent for Janet Yellen.

This is, I think, why Yellen persisted in holding press conferences only after every other FOMC meeting – a decision that implied that nothing would ever happen at FOMC meetings held in January, May, July, or October.

Yellen always insisted that all meetings were live, but the off meetings were live in the sense that a person who is unconscious and on a respirator is live – he or she isn’t about to get up and run around.

That said, it’s hard to see how the Fed will be better-run under Powell than Yellen.

The failure to reappoint Yellen is just another instance in this administration of a break with precedent that weakens American institutions – this time the damage is to Fed independence.

end quotes

As to that last, the federal reserve is hardly independent.

And where Powell will take it remains to be seen.

But out of this, it truly is hard to see how Trump will be, of even can be, the only man who gives America a chance in the face of a long-term Democrat/Liberal/progressive plan to destroy us, unless he is going to thwart their plan to destroy us by destroying us first.